


Spreading Chaos at Every Turn

by Lilymoncat



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Corvo's moral fortitude is not everyone's moral fortitude, Does no one realize the Outsider was unwittingly keeping the Void in check?, Gen, Overseers are gonna be busy, Power Corrupts, This is not a good thing, Whale God has buggered off from the Void, even the best can be corrupted, magic is no longer contained, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 12:12:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14308374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilymoncat/pseuds/Lilymoncat
Summary: The Outsider is no longer Outside.There is no longer anyone to say who can and can not wield greater magics.The Void is no longer held back.All Hell is let out for holiday.





	Spreading Chaos at Every Turn

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little piece, I just wanted to point out that there no longer being someone to say who can and can't wield abilities like those found in the Dishonored 'verse is Not A Good Thing.

_It starts slow. Almost unnoticeable. Just one or two. The trickle before the flood. The pebbles that start the avalanche._

_The Eyeless weren’t right, but they weren’t wrong either._

_The Void without an Avatar to control it is far more dangerous then the Void with one. Capricious, vindictive, fickle, wanton. For all the Overseers hatred of the Outsider, He did far more to protect humanity from itself then even He knew. No, the Eyeless made two mistakes. One, they chose an unwilling victim. Two, they left Him a way out._

_The Overseers weren’t right, but they weren’t wrong either._

_The road to ruin is paved with good intentions. Power unchecked inevitably corrupts. It is rare to find a mortal with morals that cannot be compromised. Every soul has a price, has a point where they snap and all the Void is let out for holiday. Some may be so high as to seem inhuman, but the price is there. Wandering Gaze, Lying Tongue, Restless Hands, Roving Feet, Rampant Hunger, Wanton Flesh, Errant Mind, all of these exist to some degree or another in every soul. Rare is the soul like the Lord Protector that can restrain them all._

_The Outsider is no longer Outside._

_The tide, and the Void, are coming in._

*

Marissa Edgecomb was watching her fellow barristers plot to ruin her paperwork and make her look like a fool.

Through the wall.

She didn’t know how, but she could see and hear them. She could see and hear their clients being coached on how to answer the questions she might ask them. Hear how they wanted an ‘upstart bluestocking woman’ gone from their little men’s club. See the disgusting hate and leers on their faces.

But if she could see it, she could do something about it.

Marissa Edgecomb began to plan entirely different tactics for dealing with her fellow barristers.

*

Raul Santiagos had been trapped in a mine cave-in.

And somehow he had become shadow and slithered out through the rocks.

The thing was, everyone thought he was dead. He couldn’t go back to the mines, he couldn’t get work. But he could become a shadow, go up walls and creep along floors. He could get into windows and take small valuable things.

And when the housewife surprised him and his shadow claw hands tore through her throat before she had time to scream, Raul Santiagos realized he didn’t have to leave people alive to do it.

*

Overseer Xian Khulan prayed desperately for it not to be real.

He had followed his distant relative Yul into the Overseers, determined to protect the world from the Outsider. He had sought to erase heresy where he found it, but only as a last resort. He would not drown children alive, send innocent men and women to their deaths. Even many of those touched by heresy he sought to turn back to the path of righteousness. Yet now it seemed heresy had touched him.

Every night he dreamed of the dark-skinned woman, the weathered old man, and a word, a Name given back and black eyes fading to startled green. He dreamed of the empty place where the Outsider had once been kept. And he heard the thoughts of his fellow Overseers, so many of them full of violations of the Seven Strictures, as well as the voices of the wolfhounds gleeful at being ordered to attack and uncaring if there was heresy or not.

Xian Khulan knew the Outsider was gone, and found it sickeningly ironic that he would give anything to have Him back in the Void. Protecting them from it.

*

Mio was nothing more then a street urchin.

But she was also a skinwalker.

She had her rules, though. No walking in other people’s skin, since she didn’t know if she’d explode them the way she did rats and birds and hagfish. She hadn’t exploded the wolfhound or the horse, but she wasn’t taking her chances. She didn’t know how she could do what she did. Overseer’s preaching said such things were given by the Black Eyed Outsider, but she’d never seen him. Just one day she’d been looking up at a bird wishing she could fly away from it all, the next moment she’d been the bird. She’d been so startled she’d landed and then she felt funny and popped back into herself, exploding the bird. But it meant she could always get hagfish to eat, and run or fly far away if she saw an Overseer.

Mio didn’t care if her abilities came from the Outsider or not.

*

_There are only a few of them, spreading Chaos at every turn, the first heralds of the oncoming storm. The Outsider was the dam that held back the raging flood of magic, and now the dam is gone. It’s all coming back. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. All of it left to human hearts and minds. The long lull is over, and now…_

_Well, that’s up to them, isn’t it?_


End file.
